Dan Hamilton's Shovel

I guess it all started like many others, with a random posting on craigslist. I saw this ad saying this guy wanted to trade harley parts for guns out near Clear Lake, which is sorta the meth zone of all meth zones. I didn’t have any guns, but figured I’ll call the guy. He had an 81 shovel “project” he that he needed to get rid of that night and preferred to get guns, but would take cash after I informed him cash can buy guns as well (you see who we’re working with here). Long story short, I had to drive 90 miles south to get a truck before I could turn around and drive another 180 miles back north. So, after we drove down some random one lane dirt road, we showed up around 1am to a beautiful crack den. My buddy and I were pretty sure we were gonna get robbed, stabbed or shot, so we brought a rusty pocketknife and my favorite flathead screwdriver for backup. The weapons or rash destruction ended up being totally unnecessary and the guy ended up being super nice. As I thought from before, high on meth and drunk, but that worked out in my favor.

This “project” of his consisted of a stock swing arm frame that was once in a fire then rusted to shit, a motor that was living in a tub of water, and boxes and boxes of random parts that I’m pretty sure were from the clearance shelf at Pepboys. He had a lot of other stuff too, and the deal was, if I bought the bike, I have to take everything, so, of course I did. I ended up with 2 frames, 3 front ends, 3 wheel sets, a crusty seized motor and tranny, boxes of shit parts, a bird cage, some broken lamps and more garbage he wanted to throw out.

After almost a year of slacking and being broke I ended up completely rebuilding the motor and tranny in my mothers garage, and sold everything else except for one narrow glide that I kept. Brandon at Mullins Chaindrive worked his magic and built an amazing rear section on the fire bitten frame. From there it was just a slow learning process of building a bike in your mom’s garage and spending all the money that you don’t have on parts that usually don’t work out. It took me about 9 months and at least 1,000 beers to build/sand/polish/rebuild what I messed up the first time.

There isn’t anything special to say about the bike. It’s pretty simple, nothing fancy, but that’s all you really need. It gets the job done and it’s taken care of me on trips from as far away as Mexico to as close to home as blasting around the city streets of SF. ...and for that I’ll always love it.

I just wanted to thank all my friends for motivating me by talking shit about how it’ll never be done, everyone that leant a knowledgeable hand, and my dog Lydia for being just awesome.